The Five Stages of Demotion

"I wrote this while smoking a Fincks Mexican Fiesta.

This can't be happening to me.

I'm sitting in the smoking area. It's night time and cool outside. I could see the stars if only I wasn't under a sodium light.

I have my camelbak on. I take sips of water when my throat is dry from the cigar. A copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" sits in the sand at my right foot.

I can't do this. I can’t let this blog turn into yet another whiny Napoleon Dynamite American soldier complaining about the system and the chain of command. The fact is that nobody did it to me. I did it to myself.

"You are not on the promotion list," the first sergeant says.

Those words haunt me in the night. Right now I want to be back in Paris with Miller as he searches for another meal, another whore, another place to smoke his cigarettes and work."
Big Tabacco